Quirky
by alpha aquarii
Summary: Hatake Kakashi has a conversation with Yamanaka Ino. Oneshot.


Inspired by Kakashi's theme on the Original Soundtrack I, and also the impotence I have for writing anything long and serious these days.

Concrits/betas much appreciated. Enjoy the story. It was fun to write and a pain to edit.

_Quirky_

"Stop looking at me like that! You wanted Asuma-sensei's team, so I'm here. Geez, don't you know it's impolite to just pull people from their lunch breaks?"

Kakashi looked down first at Sakura, lying limp in his arms, then at Ino, who stood with her arms folded and blinked at him angrily.

"Well…yes, but I was sort of expecting Asuma himself to come," he told her, running his words through his mind in case they didn't make sense. Ino looked dearly unimpressed.

"She only passed out from shock…why call me to do it? Can't you wake up your own unconscious student?"

Kakashi shifted Sakura's weight in his arms, not admitting anything. Girls were so rude.

"So…can you examine her?"

"You'd have to get your hands off her first, pervert."

Kakashi complied, dropping Sakura unceremoniously on the grass. He watched on in bemused detachment as Ino squealed in horror, and hurtled to Sakura's side. One hand sat her up and the other took her pulse from her stark-white wrist.

He squatted down next to her and waited patiently as Ino went through her routine. When she finally dropped her hand from Sakura's temple, shaking off the last swirling vestiges of chakra around it, he asked how she was.

"She'll be out for a while, but she'll wake up on her own."

Unconsciously, Ino brushed Sakura's hair behind her ear, fondness and frustrating bubbling under her gaze.

"Though it's understandable. I would have fainted too…" Ino then flushed, deciding not to mention in front of a respectable Jonin how loud Naruto and Lee had been stripping off and moaning all through an onsen. She finished, "In that situation."

"You mean, seeing as Naruto and Lee-kun were stripping off and moaning all through an onsen," Kakashi said for her rather cheerfully.

Ino glared at him.

"Why didn't you stop her? You knew what she was doing..."

"But she was asking for it, going peeking like that without all her variables figured out." Kakashi's voice lilted in amusement. "So, she ended up getting two for one. But it's not totally Sakura's fault…"

He and Ino said simultaneously, "Since the only one she wanted to see naked was—"

"Lee-san," said Ino.

"Naruto," said Kakashi.

They both paused. Ino's glare faltered for the first time.

She broke into hysterical laughter, clutching her ribs and acting girlish with mirth. Kakashi felt himself smiling at the sheer abruptness of it.

"Well, now that that's figured out, we can only wait, ne?" And he settled on the grass, crossing his legs and beginning to peel a clementine.

Ino's eyes flickered away from the fruit in his hand to glance at his mask. "Are you going to _eat_ that?"

He blinked, and held out the unpeeled clementine. "Unless you want it."

She shook her head and pretended to look away while keeping her eyes rapt and ready to snap to attention.

"Okay, then." As the mask came down, slowly and with no small amount of dramatic effect, the book went up.

Kakashi chuckled merrily at the exasperated noises Ino made behind his line of sight. She was not nearly as exuberant as his team, but he supposed she was still curious about his face. Funny how such a small thing seemed such a big deal to people. So he allowed her to swat him on the thigh, and she settled for glaring at the back cover of the book, switching her attention to that.

"The hell are you doing with that violation of nature? It can't be healthy! Why do you read that crap?"

"This?" Kakashi was mock-insulted. "This?" He waved _Icha Icha Paradise_ at her in a very nonchalant, very obnoxious manner. To Ino's fury, the book still somehow managed to cover his face as he did so. "You mean this?"

"That!"

Kakashi paused. Why _did_ he read this crap?

"Well, because it's hot," Kakashi answered himself.

He lowered the book so that his single eye was visible and tilted his head, giving her a happy wink.

Ino fell silent. He was vaguely put off by her flabbergasted stare, but not by much. It wasn't any different from the expressions on his team's face the first time they had met him.

"You're…" He waited, watching her from above his book. To pass the seconds, he tried to relax his eye so that it peered out indifferently, and then moved on to slackening every one of his facial muscles. He was so concentrated releasing the tension from face that when she spoke, her voice jarred him and made him mess up.

"…_quirky_."

Kakashi completely abandoned his efforts to look collected.

"Ah, pardon?"

Dead silence, in which he split the clementine and popped half of it in his mouth at once for something to do, staring at her all the while.

Ino seemed to make up her mind. "Yeah," she said, and Kakashi wondered what on earth was going on behind those twelve-year-old, glassy blue eyes. "Quirky."

He chewed slowly, making up for the lack of emotion in his eyes with a pout on his lips. She smirked at him as if she could see that, and he blinked several times. The stillness would have lasted much longer, but they were interrupted by a sudden movement at their feet that made Ino jump.

He looked down to see Sakura twitching uncomfortably, her eyelashes fluttering in a dreamlike state and her mouth twisting with a sulk. With a little sigh, she flopped over onto Ino's shoe. Kakashi watched, amused. He'd have to interrogate her sometime after she woke up about what she'd seen; the details would surely guarantee him fame and free porn if reported to Jiraiya.

Ino stood up. "Just act like nothing happened when she wakes up and she should forget on her own. Can I go now?"

"Yeah," he agreed, and stood up. He tossed the other half of the clementine to her, and she caught it out of reflex.

Ino send him a questioning look. The fruit was perfect and curved like a half-moon in her palm. Kakashi only gave her a sheepish grin. "Sorry for dragging you away from lunch."

Her expression relaxed. Ino turned around and walked back towards the picnicking area, humming a distinct, happy tune that caught in the air. She paused, and then turned again, waving at Kakashi. He nodded at her and bent down to shake Sakura, his eye tugged into a happy curve.

Sakura woke, and sat up slowly. "Kakashi-sensei?" she murmured. He caught her eye.

"Am I quirky?"

_end._


End file.
